RIP Aunt May

Just got word from my sister that Great Aunt May passed away at age 98. It's been a long time since I thought of Uncle Clarence and Aunt May, and I want to share some stories of these people who were such a part of the fabric of my childhood.

Aunt May was actually a great-aunt by marriage. She married Clarence, my grandmother's brother. After my grandfather died, Clarence took on the unofficial role of father figure to my mom and her two sisters. It was Clarence who walked my mom down the aisle on her wedding day, and Clarence who came around with her and my dad to look over houses they were considering buying. The carpet in our house growing up was from Clarence's house - left overs we took that still had some wear in them. Every time I vacuumed the blue wool rug, I'd think, "That's Uncle Clarence and Aunt May's carpet" which is kind of a weird thing, but we always had so many hand me downs from the cast of thousands on my mom's side of the family that it was normal to look at a spoon, a plate, a blender or a rug and remember a relative far off who'd donated it to our household way back when.

I remember Uncle Clarence so vividly. He was short, with a long face like mine and a big, hooked nose. He had the same laugh as Aunt Flossie (Mother Bernadette de Lourdes Belz, who I've written about before) - of course, they were siblings. A big, "hee hee HEE!" kind of chuckle that I'd know anywhere. And he had those amazing bright blue eyes like my grandma and Aunt Flossie. My sister Ann has those eyes, and her son, Eric. They seem to glow white-blue.

In the fall, he'd pull his big Cadillac into the driveway. It would be a night with black velvet skies and stars twinkling high, a cold wind blowing through crackling leaves, and Halloween pumpkins on the steps. From the open trunk he'd pull crates of broccoli, cauliflower and apple cider from the farm stands at Cutchogue. Every time I smell the broccoli and cauliflower in the garden, I feel like I'm standing with Clarence. He's break off a raw broccoli floret. I loved to munch them raw when they were so fresh and sweet from the farm stand.

He and Aunt May had a house in Cutchoque, Long Island, and my brother Steve took me there one summer for a visit. We went swimming in the bay on a rainy day. Clarence sat on his deck, a delighted smile on his face, waving to us as we swam in gray seas under a gray sky. He seemed so happy that we had come by to visit him.

Clarence was a plumber, working on the North Shore of Long Island. He told us stories of having to go among the mansions every fall and removing gold faucets so that the butlers could lock them in the safe while the family went to their winter homes in Palm Beach or somewhere else. It was from these stories that I grew to love the North Shore of Long Island and all the historic homes. When I worked at Martin Viette Nurseries in East Norwich, I'd take the scenic drive after work to John's house when we were dating, driving the back lanes through all the Gold Coast towns. I'd drive past many of the mansions and I loved to recognize homes Clarence told me about - they have names, like people, and so when I'd drive past the sign for "Whispering Pines" or "Forsyth", I knew what their bathrooms looked like (thanks to Clarence's plumbing jobs!) and whether their owners were "the nicest rich people you'd ever want to meet" or "mean as snakes."

But it was Clarence's courting of May, and May who I want to remember today. Aunt Lucille told me that Clarence met May when she was working at Mineola Plumbing Supply. The man who owned Mineola Plumbing Supply was very, very wealthy, even though it was the Great Depression; and he asked May to marry him for companionship. She was in her twenties, he was in his late sixties. She married him and he died a few years later, leaving her the plumbing business, which she ran successfully for decades. She then fell in love with Clarence, one of the plumbers who regularly stopped by the big plumbing supply store. They were in love a long time, but it took them both a while to get married.

They never had any children, and both Clarence and May were wonderful great uncle & aunt to us kids growing up. They never failed to bring us those autumn goodies, or stop by at Easter time. And they never, ever forgot that me - the littlest of five kids, and a great-niece besides - loved white chocolate, and Clarence would always run back to his big Cadillac and rummage around in the back seat and beam at me, holding out a giant white chocolate Easter rabbit.

Aunt Lucille said that May had once told her that every night, she and Clarence knelt by the side of the bed and together said a rosary just before going to sleep. That was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. So today, Aunt May, I will say a rosary for you; rest in peace, and I am glad you are with Clarence now.

Surprise Guests for Thanksgiving

I love having company but these guests were a very special sort of Thanksgiving surprise!



Pierre alerted me to our first guest, the Carolina wren. He was perched on top of the barbecue grill on the deck. Pierre was darting from window to window, giving that catly trill that means he's on the hunt. He avoided knocking more plants down in the back room trying to get a better look. The little bird looked cold. His feathers were fluffed out. He stayed there for a half an hour while Pierre and I watched.

Around 3 o'clock I was heading back to the house from a walk with Shadow. As we walked down the driveway, we passed by a fallen pine tree. It was an old diseased tree with lots of woodpecker holes in it that toppled down in the nor'easter storm. I heard rustling in the fallen leaves around it. Suddenly I noticed dozens of birds about the size of pigeons hopping up and down and darting about. "Quail!" I thought. I'd seen them once on Long Island out in Syosset, near the horse back riding stable where I worked. But I'd never seen the so close!

A quick consultant with my Peterson's Field Guide confirmed the quail sighting, but they were actually Bobwhites! I'd always wanted to see Bobwhites. I used to read the Trixie Belden mystery series as a kid. Remember the secret club the kids had in the book series - the Bobwhites of the Glen? Ever since then, I always wanted to see a Bobwhite, and now I have!

Photos today are all stock pictures....alas, I do not carry a camera on my walks with Shadow!

The Italian Spinach Recipe

This is it. It's neither vegan nor vegetarian. It's filled with lots of bad-for-you stuff. But once a year, we indulge. Happy Thanksgiving!



This recipe makes an enormous quantity of stuffing. If it doesn't all fit inside the turkey, just pack it into a pyrex bowl with a lid and bake it alongside the turkey.

Ingredients for Grandma Gandini's Italian Stuffing Recipe

• Two 16 ounce packages or bags of frozen, chopped spinach
• Eight slices of white bread, toasted and diced fine
  
• One onion, chopped into tiny pieces
• One egg
• Half a cup of grated Romano cheese (substitute grated Parmesan, but DO NOT use the stuff in the can - only freshly grated does the trick!)
• One roll of frozen pork sausage - Jamestown is the best brand
• Half cup of milk
  

Now assemble the stuffing:

• Cook the spinach until done. Drain every last drop of water out.
  
• Toast the bread and dice it up fine.
  
• Chop up the onion very fine. Fry it in butter until done.
  
• Fry the sausage, mashing it into tiny pieces like chopped meat. Drain the fat out.
  
• Place the spinach (remember to drain it super well!), the bread crumbs, the cooked onion, the sausage and the grated cheese into a mixing bowl. Stir in one egg, lightly beaten. Stir together gently. Add milk. If it looks too runny, add another slice of toasted, chopped bread. If it looks too dry, add a little more milk.
• Now stuff every last bit into the turkey, and I mean squash it in every nook and cranny...it never tastes the same cooked in a bowl!

I'm working on a vegetarian version that will capture the same taste, but the sausage is really what gives it the umami, as Cooking Light calls it...mouth feel, the additional oomph.

Enjoy!

PS: The recipe is slightly different for the ravioli. I'll post the ravioli recipe when we make the next batch.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

May God bless you with abundance now and forever.

And now I am off for a marathon of cooking, silly television, and parade watching (which is going to make me terribly homesick for New York City....since I used to work right across from Herald Square, and the intersection of Broadway and Herald Square was on my daily commute....I used to do my regular errands along that route....waved to the same guy begging for change on that corner for 10 years...got my annual hot pretzel from a street vendor on that corner....ah! Homesick already!)

Thanksgiving Recipes Galore!

My friend Monique over on the Catholic Chicks - We Love God blog is posting all sorts of scrumptious Thanksgiving recipes contributed by her readers. And I, ever helpful - and eager to get more traffic into my pitiful work-for-pennies articles - have submitted two links, one that uses leftovers and the other on how to efficiently clean up after the meal has been consumed. And yes, I know you're not supposed to haul out the vacuum while the company is still at the dinner table. Although it would chase away those people who tend to overstay their welcome...




And thanks to popular demand, I will eventually post the ravioli recipe, or at least the stuffing recipe. I need Hubby to translate his mother's scrawl from her handwritten notes.

What is it about mothers, grandmothers and older relatives that wrote their recipes down as if they were tribal secrets passed on from the elders? I've got a binder full of script that needs a Rosetta stone. Most of the recipes have ingredients but no amounts, and no instructions....thank goodness I had a husband who liked to cook, with a great grandfather who was a chef; he learned at their elbows, so to speak, when his little head could barely peek over the counter and watch as the eggs were cracked into bowls and ingredients whisked together.

Never fear. I'm publishing all of mine as articles on eHow and Hub Pages, so they're all out there! No Rosetta stone for me...just Google!

So yes, recipes are coming, and in the meantime, go for some Thanksgiving fellowship with the Catholic Chicks. Because we all love to eat, right?!

PS: I like my turkeys like the big guys in this stock photo...handsome, majestic and alive. Posting photos of Thanksgiving turkeys like this with cooking recipes always makes me think of the BBQ joints that have a happy smiling pig in a chef's hat as their emblem. Come on, do you really think the pig is happy to be on that spit, roasting away??!

We Gather Together

It's t-minus two days and counting to one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. Like the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that 99% of Americans celebrate, so you're pretty safe wishing your Jewish, Muslim and Christian friends a hearty "Happy Thanksgiving", although every once in a while I forget my Jehovah's Witness friends don't celebrate it. But they're always super gracious about my faux pas.

For most people, Thanksgiving starts the countdown clock to Christmas. Several years ago, we made the decision to forgo the commercial aspects of Christmas and focus on Christ in Christmas. So although we do put up a tree and decorations, and this year will host a little gathering for the neighbors here in Virginia, we don't go crazy buying gifts. Instead, we love to go to the Christmas pageants and singing at the local churches - our friends' pageant at Trinity Mennonite in Prospect, another friend's students performing at her school's pageant of lessons and carols.

I look forward to Midnight Mass each year, which is even more special now that I sing with the tiny choir (and yes, it starts at 10 pm, like all good Catholic churches - inside joke here). There's something so beautiful about our little church on Christmas Eve. Carols start at 9:30. When we arrived last year, there was only a sprinkling of people at 9:30. The choir began singing and I had my nose in my hymnal. When I looked up ten minutes later, the church was packed, with families all singing along, their faces bathed in candlelight. The only other time I get that choked up in church is during the Easter Vigil, when the church is in darkness and we light our candles from the fire, and we read through the stories from Genesis to the Resurrection....and I feel a chill going down my spine as I look up from the choir stalls, at the faces of my church family, all of us continuing a journey of two thousand and nine years from that day of surprise far away, when a stone rolled away from a tomb.

But it's Thanksgiving, followed by Advent and Christmas, a time of joy, that I meant to write about today. This Thursday just the three of us will gather in our beautiful dining room and hopefully I will find time for a walk through the woods. Pierre will undoubtedly steal some turkey; when he was a kitten, he once jumped up on the kitchen table, and grabbing a slice of ham in his tiny mouth, he dragged it off of Hubby's plate. Turkey is one of his favorites. Unfortuantely, it's on Shadow's list of foods she is allergic to, so we have to limit her feast. She'll get a taste, though.


It's hunting season, so bright orange will be the garb of choice for a hike; it's a fashion statement by necessity, and Shadow will don her pretty hot pink bandana so no one will shoot at her thinking she's a deer. Yes, although I eat mostly raw and vegetarian foods, we will have a turkey (no one else here is vegetarian) with wonderful side dishes: sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, and of course, my Hubby's family's Italian stuffing recipe that we could just make and eat for a meal. It's spinach-based. And that's all I'll reveal. We also use it as a homemade ravioli filling.

Ravioli making occurs in December. We haven't had our Ravioli day in a few years because of the move, but this year we both stumbled over the ravioli pans in the closet and said to one another, "We've got to make the homemade ravioli." It takes all day, and I go through all the extra sheets in the house. We drape the sheets over every available surface and place the homemade pasta squares on them to dry out before freezing them. But boy oh boy, there is NOTHING that tastes as good as our homemade, spinach filled ravioli.

I finished the flower garden cleanup this weekend, and if the weather cooperates, I'll continue to mulch and clear away the weeds that have overgrown some of the areas.

Yesterday in the mail the first of the two seed catalogs arrived: Vermont Bean Seed and Totally Tomatoes. I found myself flipping through them last night, folding down pages and taking notes.

Not even a week has passed since I finished garden cleanup, and I'm already thinking ahead to spring!

I'm thankful for so many things...for my health, the health of my family; for those who chose me to work on their writing projects and websites this year; for the great community of writers and editors I have met; for my friends and neighbors in Virginia; for the beauty here at Seven Oaks.

And I'm really thankful that you have been a faithful reader of this blog. Thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The One Eyed Peacock

Yesterday afternoon I'm sitting at my desk finishing up some emails at the end of a busy day. I've got our local radio station, WFLO, playing in the background. Every Friday around 5 pm, they announce the lost and found pets. The announcer is droning on, going over the list of missing dogs and cats. Then I hear him fumble around a bit. "There's ah...a one eyed peacock missing from the Farmville area...anyone with information please call...."

I sit up and listen. A one-eyed peacock? Did I just hear that right?

As if on cue, the announcer repeats it now in a stronger voice, as if to emphasize this is no joke. "If you've seen this bird, please call..."

How in the world can you NOT spot a one-eyed peacock wandering around downtown Farmville, the major town in the area replete with Wal-Mart, Centra Southside Hospital, dozens of restaurants and Longwood University?

Then I start laughing even harder. I think I know someone who knows the owner of this bird. Our little church choir has a tradition that on someone's birthday, we go out after practice for ice cream at Merck's. One lady brings peacock feathers for the birthday boy or girl to adorn the birthday hat so we can get good and silly. There's someone who works in her office who raises peacocks...and I think she lives in Farmville.

So, not only is it quite plausible that there is indeed a loose peacock running around by the Lowe's in Farmville, but it's possible I could get in touch with his owner.

This is what happens when you move into a small rural town!

(today's photo is courtesy of Morguefile...it is not our errant bird)

Quick story: Hubby and I were on vacation one year and we stopped to visit a home owned by Audubon, the famous illustrator. After the house tour, we sat at a picnic table near the parking lot to eat our lunch. They had lots of exotic birds wandering about...various plumed chickens, turkeys, etc....and peacocks. One stunning white peacock came nosing over. He seemed to be begging. Hubby asked me, "What do peacocks eat?" I had no idea. We had some seedless grapes in the cooler, so Hubby threw one to the peacock. That was it. It was like peacock candy. The white peacock was eating green grapes out of hubby's hand. It was surreal. He followed us back to the car, but alas, another group of picnickers attracted him, and off went our new found friend.

PS: Big thank you to Liz from the Prince Edward County Cooperative Extension Office for her kind telephone call on Thursday. Liz is a fan of this blog and called to just say hello. What can I say except that for a writer to hear a bit of praise is like throwing a grape to a peacock. Thank you dear Liz and hope you can stop by this spring to visit Seven Oaks!

My Obsession with Bearded Irises

My obsession with bearded irises, Siberian iris, and all things iris continues to grow. Hubby bought me a beautiful encyclopedia of iris breeds that was on clearance and I've got that plus some other iris books out in the living room now. Each evening, I thumb through them, dreaming. Red or blue? Bicolored or solid? It's hard to decide.

Bearded irises grew fairly well on Long Island but they thrive here in Virginia. Each spring, I see clumps and thickets blooming in glorious profusion at the edge of farm driveways, by sheds, even in ditches alongside the roads.

My goal is to plant at least one new variety each year. Last year, I planted a soft pink bicolor and a blue and was rewarded with blooms from the soft pink. The iris we moved from Huntington are thriving, so much so that Hubby remarked yesterday I may have to divide them again. I think it's too soon and want to give them another year or two.

In the meantime, as the cold weather descends and I start cleaning up the flower garden, I'm trying to decide where I can fit in more bearded iris. Should they go by the pathway, or in the back? Near the butterfly garden, or on the edge of the woods? Like the daffodil and narcissus bulbs we planted in the orchard, I want to plant new iris bulbs each year, until the garden is covered with them.

I know it's not time to plant them. It's not even time to order them. But I've already started window shopping...

Can you imagine how beautiful it's going to be when I get those bearded iris all along the edges of the woods?

November Garden Surprises

Back on Long Island, the November garden was a dreary mass of matted oak and maple leaves and the occasional surprise burst of orange from a marigold that had somehow escaped the frosts. It's different here in south central Virginia. Although we'd had some cold nights and one good, rip roaring frost (27 degrees F), the days zoom back in the 60's and '70s. The rolling hills and sheltered spots also seem to produce amazing micro climates. I've got cool weather annuals like my snapdragons just fine and dandy back by the garden shed, but a few were nipped in the flower garden next to the driveway. Ditto for the petunias; they're still blooming next to the garage, but just green out in the flower garden.

And the vegetable garden never ceases to offer surprises. The garlic is doing well, sending up robust shoots that are making my mouth water with thoughts of Italian recipes to make next year, but so is the Chard. Not unexpected, but it's rapidly overtaking the bed again. The spinach struggled along, strangely so, since I expected it to be more vigorous, but the biggest surprise has been the calendula. It's an herb whose flowers are used for skin balms. I looked out the kitchen window this morning and saw some orange peeking out from behind the catnip. And there were new calendula blossoms on a plant I thought was dead. The picture today is my little bed of calendula. I harvested the blossoms, and have them in a Mason jar next to my lavender; both will come in handy this winter.

I'm loathe to dig up anything right now. Plants that look dead revive under a few days of warmth and rain, and plants that "should", according to the garden books, be dug up and discarded are still going strong, so I'm just leaving everything alone and enjoying the long slide into winter.

The Mouse

Yes, another rodent visitor. We're noticing they come in when it's cold or rainy outside. Well, if I were a field mouse, I would too. Pierre woke us up at 4 a.m. on Thursday morning vigorously playing with something on the bedroom floor. I assumed it was one of his toy chickens, the ones he enjoys bringing upstairs and lining up on his little blanket. So I rolled over and went back to sleep. I awoke at 6, took care of Shadow, got my coffee and headed upstairs to work. As I was answering email, I heard a muffled shout from down the hallway. Hubby emerged from the bedroom. "Pierre's got a mouse."

"His green one or his blue one?"

"Neither. A real one."

He had the little creature cornered behind the night table. We went about our day, leaving Pierre on guard duty. Pierre kept his vigil all day long, barely snatching a cat nap for the next several hours. The mouse never moved.

Finally, Hubby could stand it no longer. He decided to take action.

I heard a triumphant shout. "I got him!"

He walked into my office holding a lid on top of an empty plastic container. The mouse was standing on tip toe inside, nose twitching, looking indignant.

"Nabbed him on the stairs."

Score: Pierre, 2. Hubby, 2. It's a tie.

In the middle of the nor'easter, with branches snapping and the wind and rain howling, Hubby walked out into our woods. He was gone for about 10 minutes. He came back soaking wet.

"Where in the world did you go?"

"All the way down to the fallen tree. I let the mouse go there. At least he has a place to hide from the storm."

"The owl might get him." We've got a wonderful Great Horned owl living in the woods on that side of the property. We hear her every night, hunting.

"Yeah, but at least that's nature doing what it does..." He shrugged and brushed something off his maroon sweatshirt. "You know. Not...playing him to death, the way Pierre would. Fast, natural death."

"What's that on your shirt?"

"Saltine crumbs. I left him a cracker. He's probably hungry."

I told him that St. Francis of Assissi would have been proud of him.

Nor Easter

This nor'easter won't stop today. The wind has been howling since yesterday, and it's pouring. It's cold too - only in the forties. Hubby refuses to turn the heat on. The house is around 60 degrees. I'm finishing up a few things I can only do on the main computer, then taking my laptop downstairs, lighting a fire, and working there for the warmth.

Shadow is so funny in the rain. She hates rain. Now when she sees me take out an umbrella, you can just see her face fall. "Oh no....rain. No ball playing today." When I walk her along the street, she keeps turning her head around and looking up at the sky, as if seeking the source of whoever is hurling raindrops on her. She looks absolutely offended at the rain, as if it's beneath her dignity to get soaking wet.

One good thing about stormy weather...it makes Pierre all cuddly. As I write this, my tough, independent cat has discovered sitting on my lap while I work. He's too big for that, however, and sort of drapes all 17 pounds of his king cat self across my lap, resting his chin on the arm of my chair.

My garden looks like it's drowning, and we've got a tree across the driveway. Happy fall! Now I am heading down to a warm fire and continuing my workday...

Geraniums

My plant room is now filled with friends to overwinter, mostly geraniums. I've got a soft spot in my heart for geraniums. They always remind me of my parents and Mr. Hoffman, the kindly neighbor from Floral Park who I've mentioned before.

My dad grew red geraniums in window boxes outside of our dining room. In our New York City suburban house, they attracted a hummingbird - a rarity on Long Island. I was in the fifth grade when I saw a hummingbird for the first time.

My seat at the dinner table had me facing the window that overlooked the driveway, with the window box full of red geraniums. Suddenly there was a flash of emerald and an odd hum - and there was a hummingbird, drinking nectar from the geraniums. I had never seen a hummingbird, and ever since then, I've been absolutely fascinated with these tiny birds.

I love the beautiful reds, hot pinks and light pinks and the foliage of geraniums. The smell isn't so pleasant from the foliage, but I like the diversity of foliage on them too - the frilly, frothy, dark green, light green, and green with burgundy stripe foliage.

I managed to save my reds and one pink geranium before the frost. Next year if I can find seeds or plants online for scented geraniums, I'm hoping to add some to the flower garden.

One great thing about gerniums; Pierre hates the taste of them. One nibble and he was cured of his desire to shred Mommy's plants. If only I was so lucky with the others (and my bookmarks; every single book mark I own is now decorated with cat fang marks.)

You can never have enough geraniums!

The photo below is my plant room...sorry it is so dark; I can't quite figure out how to get the lighting right in my little room.

Fall Cleanup

I am sore beyond words today. We spent a little over four hours doing garden clean up. And yard clean up. And clean up of clean up. Since the last several weekends have been so rainy, we had a lot to catch up on around here. First, we cleaned up all the left over bits and pieces from the deck and walkway construction. We piled the decorative stones that were left over into the cart behind the riding mower and took them up to the flower garden, where the large thick stones will help prevent erosion. My butterfly garden continues to turn into a sand trap as more sand from the walkway above leaks into it with every rain storm. Never again will I even think about using a sand base for a garden pathway, particularly on a slope. What in the world was I thinking? Argh!

Next, we took all the lumber out into the woods and tossed it into the odd little crevice in the woods. It's an area that looks like a giant crack in the ground and goes down about 12 feet. We've found bits and pieces of old farm things there, like rusty oil cans and bits of old paint cans, so we know the last people to have farmed the land used it as their refuse pile too. But we only put our old lumber bits and pieces there and a few old pallets, hoping that nature will reduce them to chips over time.

We put landscape fabric around the forsythia we're trying to grow into a hedge at the end of the driveway, mulched it, and moved all the big rocks we'd placed around the driveway back up into the flower garden so Hubby could weed whack the edges. As soon as I turned over the first stone, I knew we'd made the right decision to do our clean up; a black widow spider was hiding under the rock. Since it was cold, she moved slowly and I was able to kill her, but several other rocks revealed black widows of around the same size. I think clearing away the old rocks and bits of lumber from near the house was smart. I hate to use sprays, but I have used them in the garage to keep the spider population down as well as the insects they feed upon. If they don't have anything to eat, they'll go away (I hope). I made Hubby get his work gloves to pick up the rest of the rocks. Black widow bites we do not need around here...

I also pulled up the spent vegetable plants such as the peppers. We opened up the pickled peppers I canned this fall, my first project, and they were so yummy I could have eaten the whole jar on the spot! Best of all, they didn't upset my tummy the way raw peppers do...definitely a keeper. That recipe book is excellent. It is called Preserving the Harvest and I have made the awesome pear butter recipe from it that's infused with ginger and orange (and we can't get enough of that) as well as the peppers. I'm including a link to it, below if you are interested.




I had cleaned the first floor of the house in the morning, and it was Hubby's dad's 81st birthday, so I'd baked a double chocolate-chocolate-fudge cake. After collapsing on the sofa in front of a roaring fire, chicken roasting in the oven and the smell of double chocolate-chocolate-fudge cake suffusing the house, Pierre curled up next to me, and we snuggled in to finish reading a great book "Abraham Lincoln: A Man of Faith and Courage." I highly recommend this book too - it was a wonderful collection of stories about one of the most amazing men America has produced, Abraham Lincoln, stitched together to form a biography of sorts.




So that was my day. Today after church and shopping in town I'm heading home to plant bulbs. We have to dig 40 holes and stick 10 bulbs in each. I know I'm going to be sore tonight, but what a feast for the eyes that will be this spring!

Toto, We're Not in Manhattan Anymore

My neighbor Patty at Shady Acres Farm called me up and said, "We've got babies, and bottle feeding is around lunch time...come on over." So I went to see her Boer goats. She has gorgeous animals that are friendly and so well cared for. One mama died, leaving triplets orphaned, so they are bottle fed. Another mama had four and not enough milk, so some are being bottle fed. I held a week old baby in my arms and fed her a bottle. The babies wagged their little tails and followed me around. It's so hard to remember that they grow up!

The first picture is me feeding baby #44. The next picture shows the bottle feeding station they rigged up to handle all the hungry mouths. Next is another baby, #42. And two sleepy heads napping in the sun.

No, Toto, I'm definitely not in Manhattan anymore!

Bits and Pieces

I don't have children of my own, and probably will never have any, but I do enjoy my 12 nieces and nephews. My youngest nephew, Michael, is also my god son. He was in kindergarten. The operative word is "was." He was the little one I told you about a few weeks ago, who was getting in lots of trouble...saying bad words to the class, shoving crayons up his nose, and getting too riled up on the playground. He has been officially expelled from kindergarten as of last week. Now my sister in law is back doing the rounds of psychologists and neurologists at the advice of the school. The school, of course, immediately suggested putting him on several medicines. While I don't doubt that some children need such medications, doesn't it strike you as creepy that everyone is willing to push strong medications on a five year old child just to make him pliable enough to sit through kindergarten? I worry that his brain is still developing, and I don't think scientists know enough about long term effects of any of these medications....all still too new. I wouldn't risk it if he were mine, but he's not mine...so my two cents worth goes into this blog, and it's up to his parents.

My friend Annette tells the funniest story and I want to end on a light note today. She is a music teacher, and when her younger students were in class she told them the story of how Beethoven conducted while deaf. With great dramatic flourishes, she demonstrated how he would conduct, and how a friend turned around to show him the applause after his piece concluded because he could not hear it. One of her students blurted out, "Mrs. H, were you there?"

Below, a few pictures of some of my nieces and nephews....amazing, interesting young people they are all turning into. Melissa and Matt; Andrew the artist.



Have a great day!



PS: I do NOT endorse or approve of the POLITICAL ADS appearing in this blog. Google Adwords is showing them randomly. I can't turn them off. While I've been able to block x rated junk, I can't figure out how to get them off. So bear with us until Election Day is past. And remember...get out and VOTE. So many people in the world today do not have that privileged. We as Americans are truly blessed to be able to express our beliefs through the power of a vote.

Weekend Update

Patty emailed me to say that my favorite goat, Ginger, died this weekend. She's now bottle feeding the triplets plus another goat had four babies. That's unusual and mama goat doesn't have enough milk for four, so Patty's now got several babies to bottle feed. I'm invited to take a turn on the bottle feeding. I wish my day wasn't so packed with client work or I'd jump into the car and head over. Hopefully I can squeeze in some time this week, although the first week of the month is always on the busy side.

Now that the high holy day of candy is past (Halloween), I'm recommitting to my food plan and going back to "raw until dinner", or eating fresh, natural and wholesome uncooked plant foods until dinnertime. I do have yogurt-based smoothies for breakfast but the yogurt helps my body so much I have kept it in the diet. I hit up Wal-Mart after church yesterday and stocked up on produce, so I think I am all set!